A silk/linen Victoria Blazer

After making my first Victoria Blazer I knew I would like to make another one, the full length version this time. I actually finished this the first week of april *shame on me for being such a lazy blogger*.. 

 

This fabric looks quite special, it is a silk/linen blend and it has a lot of different colour tones and textures. It is a bit scratchy in places, so I lined the sleeves with a small bit of the very soft fabric I won in Aleksandra's blogiversary give-away :) No scratchy arms for me!

Excuse my hair, don't know what happened there.. 

The Victoria Blazer is quite a fast make, I think I made it in about two days of lazy sewing in between other things.. I only had one big issue, when my serger ate my sleeve fabric and I hardly had enough to cut out another one on the same grainline.. AARGHH! Luckily I was able to get away with it by removing about 1 inch from the sleeve length.. I also stole a bit of length from the seam allowances on both sides, which made it work :)

I hand stitched the hem, just as the BHL girls tell you to do, and I really like the result. I think it looks super clean and it gave me something productive to do during my nightshifts :)

The only thing is that I'm not really a blazer kinda girl, I'm just not used to wearing them.. So I really need to make an effort to think about my blazers and make sure I start wearing them on regularly.  

Sewing with a plan, fall 2013

After reading Sophie's  post yesterday morning it felt like she had been reading my mind! Sophie talks about the fact that it is just much more exciting to buy and sew with prints than with solid colours. The only issue, offcourse, is that you can only mix so much print items together. A good solid item on the other hand can be worn with a lot of other items.. 

Lining with a print doesn't count right?

Two weeks ago I went fabric shopping while on holiday in Italy and I already knew that I had to buy more solid colours for my fall sewing plans. So I made a list.. 

The patterns I want to sew this fall are:

• The Robson trenchcoat by Sewaholic
• The Minoru jacket by Sewaholic (maybe even two): finished!
• Archer shirts by Grainline Studio: check them out, here and here
• a shirt from Drape Drape
• two Victoria blazers from By Hand London

And before I start working on those, I want to:

• finish the Sew Bossy Challenge, succeeded!
• finish my Saltspring dress from Sewaholic in time for the sew-a-long, one of my favourite makes!
• make my Anna dress from By Hand London, done!

My Saltspring dress, it is actually black silk

 So when I went to the fabric store I had a plan! I even made my boyfriend pay attention that I didn't buy too many fabrics with print, only the lining was allowed to be busy (and fun).. From the outside the shop doesn't look too promising, but when you go inside, wow! It is my fabric heaven and I can easiliy spend hours there!

Here you can see a bit of the wool suiting collection on the left. The first fabrics on the right are polyester, but the rows after that are all silk. Also the complete right wall is all silk. They have a lot of designer silks ( I got silks from Missoni and Max Mara last year) and most of their silks are around 15 euro's per meter (around 15 dollars per yard)! Not bad at all right?

This was the 50% off stash 

Knits in all sorts and patterns

 So what did I get?

• Two fabrics for my Archer blouse, the blue one with the small purple dots is cotton, and the other one is a polyester. I don't usually like polyester fabrics, but this one felt super soft and was only 2 euro's per meter, so this will be my wearable muslin.

Cotton

Cotton and the polyester

• Water repellent fabric for my Robson trenchcoat. This coat needs a lot of fabric! Around 4.5 meters if I remember correctly.. That's why I chose this fabric, it is slightly grey with a hint of a denim look (but nothing too much, trust me!) and the best part, it was on sale so only 2.5 euro's per meter! The Robson coat is unlined, so no excuse for prints here. 

The Minoru jacket on the left and the Robson on the right

•  Fabric for my two Minoru jackets, one in water repellent fabric (camel colour) and the other one in wool! At first I only got the water repellent one, but when I arrived home I wished that I had also gotten some wool to make it. So two days later I went back to the fabric store and found some lovely wool, which absolutely made my day!

Lining, yay!

The water repellent fabric and it's lining.

Wool in close-up

Another lining with print!

•  For my Victoria blazer I got a silk linnen, I didn't get a lining, but I'm sure I have something suitable in my stash. I also have some fabric I got in Paris in March which I want to use for a Victoria blazer, it is a gorgeous fabric with some shimmer in it!

Silk linnen

 My Paris fabric!

•  And then I got some black jersey to make this shirt out of, it is from the book Drape Drape. I also got some other black thicker jersey to make a sweater of some sort.. 

Overall I'm really happy with my choices and can't wait to start sewing my Minoru jacket! I think that will be the first one on my to do list :)

What do you think about my fabric choices? Do you have a fall sewing plan?

Victoria, the love child between Suede and Indigo

I completed my first By Hand London pattern, and I'm absolutely in love! First of all the packaging is gorgeous, the instructions have a lot of humour in them (made me laugh out loud!) and the best thing.. You get an awesome label to sew into your garment!

Last week as I was taking the train on my way to work I had a great idea, what if I made the Victoria blazer out of suede? I had been hoarding two beautiful pieces of suede for over a year, I had bought them with the intention to make a jacket. You know how it goes, I got distracted and the jacket got put on hold.

This weekend we had dyed some fabrics and I knew that one of those pieces would make a great lining.

On tuesday evening I was working on my Belladone dress when I took a look at the By Hand London website. When I saw the Sew-A-Long I thought: What am I doing working on my Belladone? I need to make my suede Victoria Blazer! So on wednesday night I cut out my pieces and sewed my lining together. Yesterday night I worked very hard to put the rest together and I finished in time for the party! Yay!

All the layers of suede got quite thick at some points so my machine was having some issues now and then. I was sewing outside because of the warm weather and it was very enjoyable.

Working hard in warm weather

But with a nice glass of wine

I also lined the sleeves, because I don't really like the feel of suede on my skin. The sleeves are very beautiful by the way, I really like the fit at the shoulders. 

My sleeve cuffs were a bit too small, so I cut them out again, but then they were still too small, maybe it has something to do with the thickness of the suede?

Too small..

Worked out well in the end

I had some other troubles because of the weight differences with the two fabrics, the suede was pulling the lining to the outside. The pattern is designed for a flat transition (no idea how you would call it otherwise) from lining to outside fabric, so I decided to sew an extra line of stitches which help my lining stay inside. This does give you a line of visible stitches on the lining, which doesn't look as clean as I had hoped, but what can you do?

The only thing I'm afraid of, is that the lining will stretch over time and become visible on the outside.. Hmm we'll see what the future brings I guess...

Happy horse face

My boyfriend thought it would be a good idea to take pictures with some horses, since it has a kind of cowboy meets indian style he says.. I don't know, but I just like horses to I'm happy :)

 I'm already thinking of more blazers I can make, I have some great fabric which I got in Paris, which I can see being made up in a longer Victoria blazer.. Now if only I could get more labels..

Stashbusting count: 2.5/15